Remotely Advancing iPad Keynote Slides

Update: January 2015
The Satechi remote does not work with iOS 8. This may no longer be the remote you are looking for.

The last few months I’ve been giving presentations with my iPad and using a remote to trigger slides. I’m not talking about Apple’s Keynote Remote, which feels fiddly to me, but an actual clicker. I push the button and the next slide or animation triggers. It even works with the iPad’s dock connector connected to a projector. This means I can now walk in a room with an iPad mini and a remote and give a presentation. When I spoke at the Omni Group event last month, I had several people asking me how I did it. The trick to all of this is the Satechi Bluetooth Smart Pointer Mobile Presenter (Amazon affiliate link).

I paid $45 for mine on Amazon. As a remote, it really isn’t anything special. It does have a power slider so you can turn it off and be assured it won’t run down the battery in your bag. However, it charges through USB so if it dies, you need to plug it in. (You can’t just replace the batteries with a few spare AAs.) The laser is red (I prefer the more visible green.) It is also not particularly ergonomic. The buttons are flush with the surface so you can’t always figure out exactly where your thumb is without looking down at the remote. My Kensington remote is better in almost every way except for one: It can’t advance iPad Keynote slides. Despite all of issues surrounding the Satechi’s design, it finally lets me remotely trigger Keynote slides on my iPad.

The Trick

To make this work, Satechi had to get creative. There is no easy way to tell Keynote via Bluetooth to trigger slides so instead they used the iPad’s accessibility features to pull it off. There are few steps:

1. Pair the Remote

It is a Bluetooth device and you need to hook it into your iPad. This works just like any other Bluetooth pairing. In this case, a code is entered from a set of numbered buttons found under the Satechi’s sliding face.

2. Enable VoiceOver

Next you need to enable VoiceOver in the iPad’s Accessibility settings. Set it to trigger on a triple click of the iPad’s home button but don’t enable it yet.

Once that is done, set the remote to “Accessibility Mode” on the slider on the back right side. The other modes are useful for multimedia or using the remote to present with your Mac. I keep it in my bag as a back up for these purposes but so far all I really use this remote for is to present with the iPad.

Now go find your presentation in Keynote on your iPad and open it up. Then triple-click the home button on the iPad to enable VoiceOver. You’ll want to turn down your iPad volume at this point.

That’s it. Now you can move forward and backward in your presentation with the remote. That has always been a major gripe for me and now it is fixed with this hacky (yet effective) solution.

Cooking Ideas

In the past week, I’ve received several notes complimenting this episode of Mac Power Users. I’m pretty proud of this episode where I explain how I use mind maps and outlines to make things happen.

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Seven Dirty Secrets of Data Visualization

One of the first questions to ask when considering a potential visualisation design is “Why is this better than a bar chart?” If you’re visualising a single quantitative measure over a single categorical dimension, there is rarely a better option.

I think it is really easy to get too clever displaying data. Even displaying charts and graphs in three dimension can skew the visualization. Don’t believe me? Make a pie chart with 10 and 90 percent wedges and display it in three dimensions in Numbers. Then start rotating the the pie and watch how your perception of the 10% wedge changes as it rotates.

Thanks @drdrang for the link.

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MPU 125: Essential iPad

Mac Power Users episode 125 breaks down the iPad with discussions of which iPad to buy, which apps to install, and some of our favorite accessories. Check it out.

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My iPhone Wallpaper

Following yesterday’s post about my home screen, a lot of people were asking about my wallpaper. I picked it up somewhere on the Internet around the time the iPhone 5 released but now I can’t find where. If anyone knows, please send me a note so I can give credit and a link to its creator but for now, here it is.

Click Here to Download

Credit!

Several readers wrote in to say the wallpaper’s creator is Dan Waldron (@dwaldron) who shared it with this tweet. Moreover, I’m pretty sure I found it with this post at MacStories.

Thanks everyone for writing in and thanks Dan for some great work.

TE Snippets: Foreign Thanks 1.1

Thanks everyone for the tweeks and additions to the foreign thanks snippet set. I’ve updated it in the original post and TE Snippet page.

I’ve also received some nice snippet lists from readers for future posting. If you’ve got something you’d like to share, send it my way.

Screen Shot 2013-02-16 at 9.40.57 AM.png

Home screens: MacSparky

I was looking at the wealth of home screen posts going back to December 2009 and it occurred to me I’ve never posted my own home screen. Well gang, here you go.

On The Dock

Calendar

I need a calendar app in my dock because I often need my calendar. I’ve got this on-again off-again relationship with Apple’s calendar app. I know there are better solutions but at the end of the day I’m pretty scatterbrained and having the date in my dock is useful.

Drafts(App Store)

I’ve written about Drafts before. Plenty. Drafts is the ultimate text capture tool but does so much more. I use it with the keyboard and Siri all the time. Moreover, Drafts just keeps improving with an increasing number of export and automation features.

OmniFocus (App Store)

My precious OmniFocus.

Phone

Well … it is an i”Phone”.

On the Home Screen

I love my iPhone 5 but I also love having a little empty space on my home screen. I emptied out the bottom row a few months ago and now I’m used to it that way. I’m also very specific about App placement. The Camara is always top right, Email is always top left. I’ve played with alternative camera apps but the launch speed of the native app trumps their additional features.

Tweetbot and Netbot (Tweetbot App Store) (Netbot App Store)

There are a lot of great Twitter apps but Tweetbot is my favorite. I like the little delightful bits of the interface and the way everything syncs across Mac and iOS.

Calcbot (App Store)

Calcbot is another great Tapbots app. It’s a friendly calculator with great sound effects. Yes. I said that.

Reeder (App Store)

RSS feeds are my dirty habit. I try to keep the list small but I still find myself checking it several times a day. For this, I use Reeder on iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

Instapaper (App Store)

I know there are other read-it-later services but I love the way Marco Arment sweats all the details. Instapaper is, for me, a triage of sorts where articles get routed to Evernote, OmniFocus, Reading folders, and the trash. I also pay the monthly $1 subscription.

WriteRoom (App Store)

I have an ongoing battle between WriteRoom and Notesy for syncing my nvALT text files from my Mac. Currently I’m using WriteRoom because it is so damn fast at syncing. (As an aside, sometimes I’ll also run an instance of Notesy just syncing to my current Field Guide files through Scrivener on my Mac.)

Byword (App Store)

Byword is where I keep anything I’m currently writing on. I love the iCloud sync and the simple UI. It just works.

Downcast (App Store)

I originally used Instacast. I paid for the app and the in-app upgrades but they made changes to the UI and I never got used to it. Moreover, the icon was about the same color as the Music and Reader apps, which led to me sometimes hitting the wrong one. (I know how ridiculous that sounds.) So I tried Downcast about six months ago and it stuck with me, immediately.

Music

I know a lot of nerds put the Music app on a second page but I really love music.

1Password (App Store)

Agile’s done such an amazing job with version 4. I use this app probably more than I use Safari since it logs me in so efficiently and the in-app browser is so good.

Setting

I’m a fiddler with iPhone settings so I keep it handy. It would be nice if I could use Siri to do some of the most common tasks, like toggle Bluetooth and WiFi.

A Word about Badges.

I don’t like them. It feels like my iPhone is yelling at me. I turn badges off on just about every app that has them. I even turn them off on the email client. (Actually, I especially turn them off on the email client.) I’ve deleted apps that made too much a chore out of turning off their badges. In OmniFocus, I turn off all badges except “Due”. If OmniFocus lights up a badge, I know I have troubles.

The Second Page

I do seem to collect apps. My second page is a group of alphabetized folders with apps that I occasionally use or am trying out.

My Lock Screen

I rather like my lock screen. The image was created by a friend of mine, Gabe Wilson. You can download it with the below link.

Make me a Pirate (download)

Culture of Fear

Today Macworld posted an essay I wrote about why Apple people are needlessly fretting about Apple’s business and we, as users, should focus on products and services, not lawsuits and market caps.

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Japanese Woodworking

The below clip has been making the rounds the last few weeks. (I first saw it at Kottke.) Every year in Japan they have a competition to see who can make the thinnest plane shaving. The winner here was at 9 microns, which is kind of insane. When I learned about woodworking I started with western tools but quickly found myself switching to Japanese tools. Their tool steel is amazing. Plane blades are folded steel, like Samurai swords. They also use water stones for flattening, which gives the blades a ridiculously sharp edge. I’ve spent many hours happily sharpening my blades on my Japanese water stones. Another point of note in these videos is the way they pull the plane, rather than push it (as you’d do with a western plane). In my experience, pulling gets a more even stroke and isn’t so herky-jerky. I think you’d be very hard pressed getting a 9 micron shaving with a western push-plane, even a very good one with a very sharp blade.

The Japanese woodworkers also use the pull stroke on their hand saws, which make them much easier to control. I’m not going to start talking about Japanese joinery because then I’d just be gushing. I will, however, share a picture of a joint on the computer desk in my office that I made. I found this joint in a book on Japanese temples and it is much more complex than it appears. (You can also see the Japanese influence on my furniture in Alisa’s watch cabinet.)

Evernote Essentials 3.0

In case you’ve been under a rock, Evernote is evolving. They are growing as they acquire other apps and they are growing as they make Evernote better. Brett Kelly’s Evernote Essentials book is the bible for power Evernote users. The book is evolving right along with the Evernote service. Yesterday Brett released version 3.0 of the definitive Evernote book. Brett’s a friend and I know how hard he’s been working on this update with new content and new workflows. If you are an Evernote user, you should purchase a copy of Evernote Essentials. If you’ve already purchased the book, go download your free update.

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